Rethink or abandon SIR. Revelations about ECI take lid off electoral upheaval

Why in the News

Two Election Commissioners formally recorded written objections at least 14 times over 10 months against decisions taken by the Chief Election Commissioner. The objections red flagged unilateral and “unauthorised” changes to new voter registration forms. They also opposed mass voter deletions under the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls. The SIR was presented as a routine technical cleanup of the rolls maintained by the Election Commission of India (ECI). It has instead grown into a verification exercise that places the burden of proving eligibility on long standing voters. The contested point is whether an exercise its own multi member commission did not settle unanimously can still be defended as neutral administration.

What is the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls?

1. Nature of the exercise: A Special Intensive Revision is a time bound house to house verification of every entry on an electoral roll. It replaces routine updating with fresh enumeration forms for all voters.
2. What it verifies: Booth Level Officers (BLOs) verify documents at the door, delete entries found ineligible and add omitted voters. Citizenship credentials are checked as part of that verification.
3. The mapping baseline: Entries in the current roll are mapped against an earlier roll treated as the baseline. The third phase uses the 2002 electoral rolls for that comparison.

How large is the contraction the third phase has produced?

1. Delhi’s affected share: More than half of Delhi’s existing voters, 54.6 per cent, have either been struck off the roll or served notices asking them to prove they are genuine. Over 80 lakh of the Capital’s 1.45 crore registered voters are under ECI scrutiny.
2. Deletion categories: About 47.5 lakh voters have been marked for deletion under the categories of Absent, Shifted, Dead or Duplicate.
3. Technical flags: A further 33.13 lakh have been flagged for operational and technical errors. That figure includes 19.33 lakh marked for “logical discrepancies” and 13.80 lakh left unmapped against the 2002 rolls.
4. Notice volume: Over 31.6 lakh notices had been generated by mid September.
5. Spread across States: Electoral rolls are shrinking by over 15 per cent across 17 of the 19 States and Union Territories in the third phase of the SIR.
6. National projection: Overall deletions could remove 12 to 13 crore voters nationwide. Maharashtra alone is expected to lose up to 2 crore voters.
7. Steepest contractions: Delhi’s roll is shrinking by 35.89 per cent and Chandigarh’s by 31.84 per cent.

Why does the ECI’s own data cut against a technical cleanup?

1. Deletions before the SIR: Between January 2025 and June 2026, before the SIR was launched, 1.1 million Delhi voters were dropped from the rolls with no explanation offered.
2. Departure from the addition trend: Around 4,00,000 voters were added between the 2020 Assembly and 2024 Lok Sabha polls. A similar number joined between the 2024 general election and the 2025 State polls.
3. Population moving the other way: India’s adult population has expanded from 99 crore in 2024 to an estimated 103 crore today. A roll that contracts while the adult population grows inverts the expected direction.
4. Projected electorate: Analysts project that the national electorate could contract to 88 crore, disenfranchising up to 15 crore citizens.
5. Rolls smaller than turnout: In Delhi, 24 of 70 Assembly constituencies now count fewer registered electors than the number of voters who actually cast ballots in the 2025 Assembly elections.
6. A single booth: In polling booth 33 of the Chandni Chowk constituency, 908 of 909 voters were marked for deletion.

Does the non discriminatory defence survive the notice list?

1. Who the list caught: The notice list flagged the Delhi Chief Minister and her predecessor, the External Affairs Minister, a serving Election Commissioner and a serving Director of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Former holders of the offices of Vice President, Chief Justice, Army Chief and Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) were flagged as well.
2. The ECI’s reading: The ECI cites this spread as proof that the process is not discriminatory.
3. Why the spread proves little: Ministers, judges and senior officials hold the institutional access and resources to get a technical flag corrected quickly. The same flag pushes an ordinary citizen into an administrative process with no comparable route out.

Where do the flagged “logical discrepancies” actually originate?

1. Errors inside the ECI’s own databases: Many flagged discrepancies originate in the ECI’s internal records rather than in anything a voter did. A coding error converted a father’s recorded age of 45 to zero, and a clerk’s misspelling of a name created an artificial “logical discrepancy”.
2. The 2002 baseline carries its own errors: A former Chief Election Commissioner has criticised treating the 2002 roll as an unassailable baseline for voter mapping, noting that even his own father’s name was misspelt in the 2002 data.
3. Software deletions with welfare consequences: In Goa the ECI’s software eliminated large numbers of legitimate voters and cut them off from benefits ranging from dialysis to transplants, for which only voters are eligible.
4. The West Bengal error rate: In West Bengal 27 lakh voters were flagged for tribunal review over alleged “logical discrepancies”. Of 82,000 cases adjudicated, Right to Information (RTI) disclosures showed 91 per cent had been wrongly deleted and had to be restored.
5. What the error rate implies: Nine wrong deletions in every ten adjudicated cases put the reliability of the flagging algorithm itself in question.

Challenges to the Special Intensive Revision

1. Quasi judicial power delegated to field enumerators: Booth Level Officers are effectively tasked with verifying the citizenship credentials of long standing voters, a determination they have no training to make. Eg. In Uttar Pradesh field verification by Booth Level Officers was reported to be cursory, with forms collected in bulk and without individual verification.
   The Fix: Route every citizenship doubt to the Electoral Registration Officer with a written order and a reasoned finding, so the determination sits with a designated officer rather than a field enumerator.
2. Compressed timelines before major polls: The SIR was scheduled for compressed execution immediately before major elections in Bihar, West Bengal, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, leaving voters too little time to appeal and rectify. Eg. The ECI has offered no rationale for forcing millions of voters into documentation checks just weeks before they are due to vote.
   The Fix: Fix a minimum gap between the publication of a final roll and the notification of a poll, so an appeal can be heard before the election it affects.
3. Deletion without individual notice: Unreliable software combined with field discretion converts routine documentation checks into arbitrary purges. Eg. In West Bengal the requirement of individual notice before deletion under the Registration of Electors Rules, 1960 was alleged to have been violated.
   The Fix: Publish the flagging parameters and require a signed individual notice stating the ground before any name is removed.
4. Legality settled while fairness is not: The Supreme Court has upheld the legality of the SIR, so the exercise continues while its fairness is contested outside court. Eg. A former Election Commissioner and a former Chief Election Commissioner have both openly questioned the exercise’s fairness.
   The Fix: Require the Commission to publish a reasoned majority order for every contested SIR decision, so a fairness objection has a document to attach itself to.
5. An exceptional exercise launched without a stated trigger: An intensive revision is exceptional and is triggered only where rolls have remained largely unchanged for years or large scale irregularities are suspected. Eg. The nationwide SIR was announced within six months of a clean January 2025 summary revision, with no new justification offered.
   The Fix: Record the specific irregularity that triggers an intensive revision in the order announcing it, so the exceptional character of the exercise is tested at the outset.

Conclusion

An electoral roll revision draws its authority from the presumption that the body running it is neutral. A written record of its own members objecting to the decisions removes that presumption, and a judicial finding on legality does not restore it. What remains unreconciled is the Commission’s duty to remove ineligible entries against its duty not to remove eligible ones, with the second carrying no comparable enforcement behind it. The marker to watch is whether the Commission publishes a reasoned majority order for the contested decisions and reopens the appeal window before the next set of polls.

Electoral Roll Revision in India

1. Statutory basis: Electoral rolls are prepared and maintained by the ECI under Article 324 of the Constitution and Section 21 of the Representation of the People Act, 1950.
2. Summary revision: This is the routine exercise carried out before every general election to the Lok Sabha, every State Legislative Assembly election and every bye election, against a qualifying date.
3. Special Summary Revision: An enhanced version run before major elections. It uses targeted campaigns to add voters who have turned 18, remove deceased voters and correct existing entries.
4. Intensive revision: The exceptional category, used only 13 times since Independence, in 1952, 1957, 1961, 1965, 1966, 1983 to 1984, 1987 to 1989, 1992, 1993, 1995, 2002, 2003 and 2004.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2026, GS2, 10 marks] Is the right to vote a fundamental right? Discuss the position of the Election Commission of India while undertaking the revision of electoral rolls. Can it also examine the question of citizenship of voters?”